Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Colonization of the Moon
Summary
Colonization of the Moon is a process or concept employed by some proposals for robotic or human exploitation and settlement endeavours on the Moon. Settling of the Moon is therefore a more specific concept, for which the broader concept of colonization is often used as a synonym, a use that is contested in the light of colonialism.
Laying claim to the Moon has been declared illegal through international space law and no state has made such claims, despite having a range of probes and artificial remains on the Moon.
While a range of proposals for missions of lunar colonization, exploitation or permanent exploration have been raised, current projects for establishing permanent crewed presence on the Moon are not for colonizing the Moon, but rather focus on building moonbases for exploration and to a lesser extent for exploitation of lunar resources.
The commercialization of the Moon is a contentious issue for national and international lunar regulation and laws (such as the Moon treaty).
Colonization of the Moon has been imagined as early as the first half of the 17th century by John Wilkins in A Discourse Concerning a New Planet.
Colonization of the Moon as a material process has been taking place since the first artificial objects reached the Moon after 1959. Luna landers scattered pennants of the Soviet Union on the Moon, and U.S. flags were symbolically planted at their landing sites by the Apollo astronauts, but no nation claims ownership of any part of the Moon's surface. Russia, China, India, and the U.S. are party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which defines the Moon and all outer space as the "province of all mankind", restricting the use of the Moon to peaceful purposes and explicitly banning military installations and weapons of mass destruction from the Moon.
The landing of U.S. astronauts was seen as a precedence for the superiority of the free-market socioeconomic model of the U.S., and in this case as the successful model for space flight, exploration and ultimately human presence in the form of colonization.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related courses (3)
EE-582: Lessons learned from the space exploration
The objective of the course is to present with different viewpoints, the lessons learned which lead to the decisions in the space exploration and their consequences today and for the decades to come.
PHYS-209: Astrophysics I: introduction to astrophysics
Ce cours décrit de façon simple les processus physiques qui expliquent l'univers dans lequel nous vivons. En couvrant une large gamme de sujets, le but du cours est aussi de donner un aperçu général d
COM-309: Introduction to quantum information processing
Information is processed in physical devices. In the quantum regime the concept of classical bit is replaced by the quantum bit. We introduce quantum principles, and then quantum communications, key d
Related lectures (34)
Domestic Space: Colonization, Monasticism, and Villa Architecture
Explores the historical development of domestic spaces in ancient Rome, focusing on colonization, villa architecture, and monasticism.
Lessons Learned from Space Exploration
Explores the history of space exploration, from the Cold War to future missions.
Lessons learned from Space exploration
Delves into historical space decisions, geopolitical impacts, and personal space industry advice.
Related publications (19)
Related people (1)
Related concepts (16)
Lunar resources
The Moon bears substantial natural resources which could be exploited in the future. Potential lunar resources may encompass processable materials such as volatiles and minerals, along with geologic structures such as lava tubes that, together, might enable lunar habitation. The use of resources on the Moon may provide a means of reducing the cost and risk of lunar exploration and beyond.
Moon landing
A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013.
Lunar south pole
The lunar south pole is the southernmost point on the Moon, at 90°S. It is of special interest to scientists because of the occurrence of water ice in permanently shadowed areas around it. The lunar south pole region features craters that are unique in that the near-constant sunlight does not reach their interior. Such craters are cold traps that contain a fossil record of hydrogen, water ice, and other volatiles dating from the early Solar System. In contrast, the lunar north pole region exhibits a much lower quantity of similarly sheltered craters.
Related MOOCs (3)
Introduction to Astrophysics
Ce cours décrit les principaux concepts physiques utilisés en astrophysique. Il est proposé à l'EPFL aux étudiants de 2eme année de Bachelor en physique.
Introduction à l'Astrophysique
Ce cours décrit les principaux concepts physiques utilisés en astrophysique. Il est proposé à l'EPFL aux étudiants de 2eme année de Bachelor en physique.
Introduction to Astrophysics
Learn about the physical phenomena at play in astronomical objects and link theoretical predictions to observations.